1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic apparatus and a method for controlling the same, and in particular to an electronic apparatus that has an image capture function and can be driven by a removable battery, and a method for controlling the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Battery-operated electronic apparatuses such as digital cameras, portable media players, and mobile telephones are widely used, but some non-genuine batteries may cause abnormal operation or malfunction of the electronic apparatus.
Furthermore, some non-genuine batteries are counterfeit products of genuine batteries, and a user may use such a counterfeit product unintentionally (misrecognizing it as a genuine product). Accordingly, by informing the user of the fact that he or she is using a non-genuine battery product in the case of such a use, it is possible to prevent the user from unintentionally using the non-genuine product.
Japanese Patent No. 4784490 discloses an electronic apparatus that, when the battery in use is a non-genuine product, requires a user to input whether or not he or she recognizes the battery as a genuine product, and that, if the user recognizes the battery as a genuine product, informs the user of the fact that the battery is abnormal and forbids discharge.
Furthermore, Japanese Patent No. 4784490 also discloses that histories of battery authentication results, etc., are stored in a nonvolatile memory of a control circuit of the electronic apparatus.
In the electronic apparatus of Japanese Patent No. 4784490, it is possible to prevent a user from misrecognizing a non-genuine product as a genuine product. Furthermore, by reading the contents of the nonvolatile memory, it is possible to confirm a history of the used batteries.
A need to refer to that battery usage history may arise mainly when an electronic apparatus is inoperative or operates abnormally. However, in such a situation, it is difficult or impossible to perform reading itself of the history information stored in the nonvolatile memory of the control circuit as with the configuration of the above-referenced document, and thus there is the case where effective use of the history information cannot be made.